Search Month: July 2007 Search News, In Review

Aug 1, 2007 at 10:43pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Search Month is a monthly newsletter that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past month. It’s also available by feed here. Below, news about Search Engine Land itself, then our 10 most popular stories from July 2007, then a major story for various search topics along with other stories related to those topics since our last monthly newsletter through today.

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Search Engine Land News
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Search Engine Land’s big news from July was the launch of our Sphinn (we say it "spin") social networking and news sharing site. Sphinn: Our Social Site For Search & Internet Marketing Professionals explains more about how the site will allow people to comment more easily on Search Engine Land stories, as well as share and vote on stories from across the web. You can also find marketing events and associate yourself as going to them plus network with others online. Check it out — we have over 1,500 members already!

Search On Search: New Column From Search Engine Land covers the addition of our latest column, one written by employees of search engines. Columnists are free to discuss technical details of how their search engine works or write opinion pieces that may or may not reflect the official position of their employer. The Search On Search column will appear periodically.

Looking to perform keyword research? Be sure to check out the Search Term Research section of Search Engine Land, which was updated in July to list a wide variety of key resources and tools you can consult. The Search Behavior section was also updated to list places where search engines generally report on search activity, such as trends in searching.

As a reminder, our sister site Search Marketing Now is offering a free webcast on doing industrial-strength SEO for the large site. Free Webcast This Thursday: Managing SEO for Big Sites, Big Brands explains more about the webcast.

Search Engine Land’s next Search Marketing Expo event is only about two months away – SMX Local & Mobile, in Denver this October 1 & 2. Like our sold-out SMX Advanced show in June, this is a strictly limited capacity event! So sign-up now to ensure you can get in, plus register by August 15 to secure "early bird pricing" and save.

Don’t miss out on learning about the new opportunities that local and mobile search offer! Search Engine Land executive editor Chris Sherman, along with staff writer and Locals Only columnist Greg Sterling, have crafted a great agenda covering all aspects of both local and mobile search.

Also in October is our SMX Social Media. That happens October 16 & 17 in New York. The show will cover the range of how social media sites such as Digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo Answers and others provide a growing and important way to reach consumers or an audience you’re after.

Doing more forward planning? Here are additional SMX shows from Search Engine Land happening this year:

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Top 10 Most Popular Stories: June 2007
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1) Google To Add "Unavailable After" META Tag – Google is releasing a new META tag named "unavailable_after." The "unavailable_after" tag will allow you to tell Google when Googlebot should no longer crawl that page.

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2) SEO Tips & Tactics From A Wikipedia Insider – I am a Wikipedia administrator, and I specialize in complex investigations. Media professionals and Wikipedia volunteers seldom understand each other. So I’ll illustrate my perspective with an example: let’s have a look at some politicians.

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3) Doing Keyword Research? Here Are Some Resources To Help! – Search term research is one of the fundamental activities for a successful search marketing campaign. You’ve got to know the words people are using if you want to target them properly. To help, I’ve expanded the Search Term Research section of Search Engine Land to list a variety of resources and tools you can consult. The Search Behavior section also has been updated to list places where search engines generally report on search activity, such as popular trends in searching. Both sections also recap articles we’ve covered on these topics. In this article, a bit more about what’s in both sections, along with the sad decline of the Yahoo Keyword Selector Tool and some alternatives that have come along in its place.

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4) Compete: Microsoft Gaining Searches; Live Search Club Giveaway Working? – Compete is out with its latest search marketshare report for June 2007, showing that MSN/Windows Live Search has posted a dramatic rise since last month. This appears to be do to the Live Search Club promotion that’s going on. Below, a look at the trend, a history of how giveaways for search have and haven’t worked, as well as some revisiting to past issues with Compete’s figures.

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5) 5 Tactics For Driving Traffic From StumbleUpon – StumbleUpon is a hot social discovery site that continues to rapidly increase in popularity. With the increase in popularity comes an increase in the potential traffic that it can drive to your sites. StumbleUpon has always been great at driving traffic and links, but lately I’ve started to notice that it is one of the leading social sites, often times sending more traffic than even Digg.

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6) How To Build An Audience On MySpace – MySpace is a great social media site that marketers can leverage in a number of different ways. One of these is building up a large audience for your profile, which can then be used to drive traffic to your site, interact with consumers, create mind share, and even empower people to brand your company for you. The problem is that most people don’t know how to build a large audience. And unless you’re a well-known, popular brand, chances are that if you build it they won’t come. Here are some things that you can do to build a large relevant audience on MySpace.

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7) Yahoo.com Adds Search Suggestions – The Yahoo Search Blog announced that the search box on Yahoo.com now offers search suggestions as you type. For example, as I started typing "danny s", Yahoo offered suggestions, including "danny sullivan."

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8) Google Search URL Parameters Explained – Appending different parameters to the end of the Google search URL string can often extend the Google search results into something that may be more tailored for your specific search. Joost de Valk created a Google Web search parameters cheat sheet (PDF file) that contains a comprehensive list of many of the different parameters you can add to the Google search URL.

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9) Search Suggestions On Steroids: Yahoo Search Assist – I chuckled a bit over the buzz Yahoo got when they launched Yahoo Search Suggest earlier this month because I knew something even better was coming: Yahoo Search Assist. Finally, it’s going live and in the wild for lucky people who are selected at random for testing. If all goes well, eventually everyone will get to use this new search refinement feature that I find very compelling. Yahoo Search Assist is smart, in the sense that it shows up when you need it.

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10) Deconstructing Grouped Google Results – My favorite session at SMX Advanced last month was "Give It Up," the session where panelists shared little-known secrets. I’m a little biased, since that was the panel I spoke on. But still, as the last session of the two days, it really ended the conference with a bang. For those of you who didn’t attend, there was a 30 day moratorium on blogging/writing about the session. Today marks the end of that embargo period, so without further ado, here’s the secret:

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AOL
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AOL To Acquire Behavioral Targeting Ad Network Tacoda – AOL announced that it would be acquiring Tacoda, a behavioral targeting (BT) ad network and technology provider (which works with many newspaper publishers). AOL owns the largest online ad network, Advertising.com, and will be integrating BT capabilities into that property as well as others across its network.

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Ask.com
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Microsoft Office Live To Let Customers Purchase Ads On Ask.com – Ask Sponsored Listings are going to be added to Microsoft Office Live’s adManager Beta search advertising service. This is reportedly the first time in five years that two of the top five search engines have joined together to offer search engine ads to advertisers. See also:

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B2B
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Understanding Your Audience With Search, B2B Style – Isn’t it funny how things have a way of coming full circle? It’s been years since I last talked with my mentor, but his sage advice rings true today more than ever. He told me that anyone can ramble on about anything without regard for their audience, but that it takes great skill to find a connection and engage them in a conversation. And the only way to make that connection, he said, is by understanding the audience you are trying to reach. The same can be said of search. See also:

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Beyond USA
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German-Backed Search Project, Theseus, Given $165 Million Grant -  Theseus, a German search research project, has received a $165 million grant from the European Union. Theseus aims to develop an advanced multimedia search engine. The EU will allow German subsidy of the project through 2011. See also:

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Business & Revenues
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Answers.com To Buy Dictionary.com For $100 Million – Answers Corp has reached an agreement to buy Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com and Reference.com from Lexico Publishing Group, LLC for $100 million. See also:

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Copyright
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Google, Microsoft & Others Want Copyright Warnings To Be Clearer – The Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), which includes Google and Microsoft, are filing a complaint with the FCC about how some content companies are taking their copyright warnings a bit too far. The CCIA would like the FCC to require these content companies, including sports leagues, movie publishers, book publishers and more, to stop using wording the copyright warnings in an obscure and unclear manner.

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Domaining
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Best Practices For Corporate Domain Name Management – While a decent percentage of the global business community has become aware of the importance of search engine marketing, very few businesses seem know about the best practices surrounding the purchasing and ownership of web site domain names (e.g. when to purchase, what to purchase, etc.). Unlike SEO problems, where a banned site can get re-included if the webmaster fesses up to bad behavior, mistakes involving domain names are frequently permanent (though sometimes large amounts of cash can be used to overcome problems). See also:

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Google: AdSense
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Profile Of Susan Wojcicki: Mother Of AdSense – USA Today looks back at how Susan Wojcicki’s decision to let Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, rent out space in her garage changed her life and ours. Wojcicki purchased her 4-bedroom home on 232 Santa Margarita Ave. for about $600,000 and rented out the garage to Page and Brin for $1,700 a month (Google later bought the house). That decision helped create the most popular search engine in the world and changes Wojcicki’s future forever. See also:

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Google: AdWords
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Personalized AdWords: Google Ads You See Influenced By Previous Searches -Google is personalizing ads for people based on their previous search query. For example, you can do a search for weather forecast, then conduct a new search on holiday in spain, and then do another search on weather forecast and you should then see ads for weather reports in Spain. See also:

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Google: Acquisitions
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House & Senate To Review Google’s Acquisition Of DoubleClick – Google’s executives will be called on to testify in from of the U.S. House and Senate committees over the DoubleClick acquisition. There has been a lot of opposition to this acquisition, leading to an FTC filing asking for a closer investigation into the anti-trust and privacy issues of such a deal. See also:

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Google: Business Issues
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Google Q2 2007 Revenues Released: $3.87 billion – Google just reported Q2 revenues: "Google reported revenues of $3.87 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2007, representing a 58% increase over second quarter 2006 revenues of $2.46 billion and a 6% increase over first quarter 2007 revenues of $3.66 billion." Revenues were somewhat short of high-end Wall Street expectations and shares were down in after-hours trading. See also:

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Google: Maps
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Google Mapplets: Google Endorses Mashups, Makes Some More Interactive – The Google Lat Long Blog announced a new feature available on Google Maps that enables you to add "Mapplets" directly on the "My Maps" section. These Mapplets, often referred to as mashups, allow you to add data on top of the maps. Some of the data overlays include real estate listings, jogging trails, events and photos but are open to really anything. See also:

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Google: Maps & Mobile
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Google Gets Some Of What It Wanted From The FCC – Yesterday, the FCC gave Google some — but not all — of what it wanted to participating in an upcoming auction for new wireless spectrum. See also:

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Google: News Search
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Google News Expands Help Center For Publishers – The Google News Blog announced they have expanded the Google News help section for publishers. The new help section has a wealth of information for those interesting in submitting content to Google News, as well as troubleshooting documents on issues with content already in Google News. See also:

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Google: SEO Issues
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Google Dumps The Supplemental Results Label – As many expected, Google has announced that it is dumping the supplemental result label for pages listed within its supplemental index. Does that mean the supplemental index has gone away? No. But Google promises that being in the supplemental index versus the main index should be less of an issue for site owners, going forward. See also:

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Google: Searching
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"Google Promotion" Now Used To Flag Google’s Bourne Ultimatum Video Ads – Google has just informed me that they have added the label "Google Promotion" to the Bourne Ultimatum video ads they have been running. They said they made this change to "make it more clear that this is not one of our objective search results or an ad, but an experiment promoting Google products." See also:

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Google: Video & YouTube
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Want To See The Latest Movies For Free? Use Google Video, Complains Watch Group – The National Legal & Policy Center documented fifty cases of movies and other copyrighted material being uploaded and accessible via Google Video for free. Some examples include Spiderman III, 300 and Meet the Robinsons, and those are just movies from this year. See also:

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Google: Other Products
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Map Of Google’s Products – Ever wanted to see all of Google’s products and services mapped out in icon view on one single page? Zorgloob has created a map of Google products, which is just enormous. If you click on a product image within the map, you are taking to a page that describes the product and enables you to rate that product. See also:

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Image Search
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Live Image Search Adds Face, Portrait, B/W, & Related Features – The Live Search Blog announced new image search features over the weekend. The new features include a way to search for images of people by face, portrait, black & white and related people. See also:

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In House
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The Challenges Of Bringing Search Marketing In-House – Many organizations are making the transition from using an agency for search marketing to bringing it in-house and along with this transition comes many challenges. To find out how organizations cope with the transition, we posed the following question to some of the top in-house SEO analysts. See also:

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Link Building
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5 Deadly Sins Guaranteed To Kill Your Link Requests – Here in the Link Week column, we mostly discuss intermediate to advanced linking related subjects, but I’m compelled to cover a very basic topic this week. Link requests. The link builders are out in force this summer. The proof is in my inbox. Over the two weeks since my last LinkWeek column, I’ve counted the number of link requests I’ve received. The total? Forty-two. See also:

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Local Search: Business Issues
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Yellow Pages Publisher Buys Business.com For $350 Million – RH Donnelley, which acquired SEM firm LocalLaunch in 2006 and owns the local search/online yellow pages site DexKnows, has announced the acquisition of Business.com and its related properties for $350 million. See also:

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Local Search & Maps
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Microsoft vs. Google: Street Photography Rigs Compared – Gizmodo, in something of a tongue-in-cheek post, compares the cars and cameras Google is using to capture its StreetView imagery with those being used by Microsoft for what has been known as StreetSide. StreetSide is a Live Local product that predated Google’s StreetView but has been limited to San Francisco and Seattle. See also:

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Local SEM
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The Future Of Rich Media On Local Sites – If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video may speak volumes. Yet despite the popularity of rich media elsewhere on the Internet, the use of photos and videos on local sites is in its infancy. And with earbuds sprouting across the human landscape delivering podcasts on all manner of topics, it is curious that users cannot easily subscribe to the audio vignettes about local businesses. What then is the future of rich media on local sites? See also:

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Microsoft: adCenter
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Digg Buries Google AdSense For Microsoft Ads – Digg has dropped Google as its ad provider in exchange for for a three-year exclusive ad deal with Microsoft. Microsoft will be providing the display and contextual advertising on Digg’s popular social news site, with traffic estimated at over 17 million unique monthly visitors. The switch over will take place in early August and will impact only US traffic. See also:

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Microsoft: Business Issues
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FTC OKs Microsoft’s aQuantive Acquisition – Microsoft’s bid to acquire online marketing firm aQuantive for $6 billion has cleared an antitrust regulatory hurdle, the companies said today. The FTC-mandated waiting period to review anticompetitive fallout from large mergers has passed without additional inquiries from the FTC, clearing the companies to move forward with the deal. See also:

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Microsoft: SEO
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Live Search Now Supporting Sitemaps Autodiscovery Via Robots.txt File – This morning I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that Microsoft Live Search is finally now supporting sitemaps via autodiscovery. Microsoft will only use your sitemaps file if it is listed in your robots.txt file. You cannot currently ping Microsoft or upload your sitemaps file to Microsoft.

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Mobile Search
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Google & Other Search Apps For The iPhone – It has been almost two weeks since I got my iPhone and I have been playing with it for a while now. I wanted to share with you the various cool search applications I use on my iPhone, including Google’s AJAX iPhone search.

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Paid Search & Contextual
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Google, Yahoo, Microsoft: Year-To-Date PPC Report Card – As 2007 is now half over, it seems a good time to compare the performance of the Big Three search engines year-to-date. The punch line: Google reigns dominant, providing the lion’s share of clicks, and Google clicks convert well. Microsoft offers strongly converting clicks at a lower-than-expected cost—good efficiency, but sadly almost no volume. Yahoo commands 22% of ad spend, but lags in click quality. See also:

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Popularlity
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Microsoft On Search Gains & Live Search Club – Earlier this week, Microsoft got some positive news about its search share growing thanks to a Live Search Club program it started in May. But then came the criticisms. Was the traffic just off people using robots to win prizes? Nope, says Microsoft. I had a short talk with the new general manager of Window Live’s search business group, Brad Goldberg, earlier today. The traffic comes from real people, and he thinks Microsoft will retain those people over time. See also:

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Privacy
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Microsoft To Anonymize Log Data; Calls For Industry Standards Along With Ask.com - First Google, then Ask.com and now Microsoft have jumped onto the privacy protection train. Late yesterday, Microsoft announced that it was going to follow Google’s lead and anonymize search log data after 18 months. In addition, it has partnered with Ask to call for an industry effort to develop privacy principles. There’s a tinge of PR stunt in this, but if looking for a PR edge will get the search engines moving, I suppose that’s a necessary evil. A look at what Microsoft is doing, the industry call and lots of perspective (plus a timeline) on how we got here. See also:

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Searching
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Search Wikia Takes Steps To Crawl; Acquires Grub – Wikia, Inc., the for-profit company developing the open source search engine Search Wikia, has acquired Grub, a distributed crawler platform, from LookSmart. Distributed crawler? While each individual Grub client is a mite compared to a search engine crawler, the collective power of thousands of Grub clients working in tandem can be impressive. "We’re hoping to get lots of people involved to help us crawl the web," said Jimmy Wales, co-founder and chairman, Wikia, Inc. See also:

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Searching: Google Free Mondays
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Google Free Fridays Now Officially Become Google Free Mondays – Earlier this month, we started the Google Free Friday series, designed to open readers’ eyes to search engines beyond Google. AOL happened on schedule, then I had to move Ask.com and Microsoft. Since that will be two Google Free "Fridays" happening on a Monday, I figure let’s get it over with and move Yahoo as well. See also:

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Search Marketing Industry
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Where Should New Search Marketers Start? – Search Engine Guide covers a variety of ways on how new search marketers can go about learning the the trade. There are plenty of good resources and tips worth checking out. See also:

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SEO & SEM
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Understanding Search Engines Duplicate Content Issues – I admit it. I am a search engine geek. Because I have a passion for understanding search usability, one of my particular interests is duplicate content filtering. I’m happy to see how search engines are becoming increasingly effective at filtering out duplicate content. See also:

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Small Business
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When Ignorance Isn’t Bliss: What You Don’t Know About Your Web Site Can Hurt You – It’s tough to be a small business in today’s fast paced world. Small businesses not only have to know their core industry inside out, but now they have the additional burden of being proficient in online marketing. Since many small businesses have limited staff, most people within these companies wear multiple hats, from CEO to webmaster. Unfortunately, this often means the person responsible for the web site knows very little about it. Take heed: little details associated with your web site that are ignored can have a negative affect on your site and your business. See also:

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Social Media
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How To Create A Viral Facebook App – Back in May, Facebook launched a platform that allowed developers to tap into the Facebook hub itself. The Facebook Platform is a set of resources and tools that enables rapid development of applications for Facebook users. It’s proven wildly popular, and companies are leveraging it to gain thousands if not millions of new visitors to their websites. See also:

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Yahoo: Business Issues
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Yahoo Sees Revenue Growth, But Income Down – Yahoo released its Q2 earnings a little while ago. What they show is low double-digit growth in certain revenue categories, but also decreases in selected areas (e.g., operating income, free cash flow). See also:

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Yahoo: Searching
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Yahoo Search Adds Travel Shortcuts – The Yahoo Search Blog has announced that they have added new Yahoo Travel shortcuts. If you search on a travel destination, such as Jerusalem, up comes a shortcut box with travel related information. See also:

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Fun Stuff & Other Things
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If Search Engines Were Frat Houses From Movies – I love search engines. I love comedy movies. So let’s have fun putting the two together. Which search engines are most like some famous movie fraternities? Yes, there is an Animal House of search! See also:


Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series, maintains a personal blog called Daggle and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan.

See more articles by Danny Sullivan >

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